Union Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ramesh Jigajinagi has said the Central government will send an expert team to study and suggest ways for protecting the freshwater Sasthamcotta Lake.
Mr. Jigajinagi, who was here on Saturday as chief guest for the programmes organised by the district unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party in connection with the third anniversary celebrations of the National Democratic Front government, made the announcement after visiting the lake.
Addressing environmentalists at Sasthamocotta, he said it was a beautiful freshwater lake and that the Centre would do everything possible to protect the lake, especially because it was the main drinking water source for the district and that 5 crore litres of water was being drawn from it every day for the purpose.
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Mr. Jigajinagi said he would take up the issue of the lake with Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation Narendra Singh Tomar and expedite moves for constituting and sending the expert team.
Unimpressed
However, environmental activists who were championing for the protection of the lake are not impressed by the announcement made by Mr. Jigajinagi.
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They pointed out that such expert teams from the Central and State levels had often studied the lake and made recommendations now and then but nothing productive had come out of these. In September 2012, an exert team led by Siddharth Kaul, adviser on wetland conservation to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, had studied the lake.
They said ample expert-level recommendations on measures for the protection of the lake were already with both the Central and State governments.
“The findings and recommendations of another expert team study are not expected to contain anything more than what has already been understood and recommended. As it is, the proposed Central team will have to collect facts from the very same sources that the previous expert teams had relied upon,” they said.